Tag Archive for: Wave

The Second Wave of a Ransomware Pandemic

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In January, we published the Ransomware Pandemic, a report discussing the ever-evolving threat of ransomware and the growing devastation disseminated by these malicious malware strains. The report discussed the future forecast for ransomware and how we imagined the threat would progress in the immediate future. Just six months later, these predictions have already become a reality. In this part of our discussion about the ransomware pandemic, we shall examine these developments and discuss exactly how we, as a community, can begin to confront this ongoing struggle.

Six Months of Chaos

Since the beginning of 2021, ransomware has dominated headlines across the globe. We have witnessed some of the most significant ransomware attacks the world has ever seen—events that have already changed the landscape, evidenced in the way world leaders are responding to these attacks, altering policies and beginning to consider real-world responses.
It is now estimated that worldwide, the cost of ransomware attacks will exceed $265 billion in the next decade, spiralling out of control by 2031 if a solution is not identified. Health care has continued to be a high-value target in these attacks, with significant breaches against Ireland’s department of health and a major attack against New Zealand’s health care system so far this year, both attributed to ransomware. These compromises led to the cancellation of major surgeries and appointments, causing disruption and backlogs in a sector already under a phenomenal amount of pressure.

In May 2021, cyberinsurance giant AXA was hit by a controversial attack, just one week after announcing that they would no longer be covering ransom payments in their cyberinsurance policies. In June 2021 JBS USA Holdings Inc., the world’s largest meat supplier, met an $11 million ransom demand after their systems were compromised, with the CEO stating, “It was very painful to pay the criminals, but we did the right thing for our customers.”

Another sector that has taken a huge hit in 2021 is critical infrastructure. The attack against U.S. fuel supplier Colonial Pipeline in May this year attracted arguably the most public attention the cybersecurity community…

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A Wave Of Billion-Dollar Computer Vision Startups Is Coming

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Computer vision is the most technologically mature field in modern artificial intelligence. This is about to translate into enormous commercial value creation.

The deep learning revolution has its roots in computer vision. At the now-historic 2012 ImageNet competition, Geoff Hinton and team debuted a neural network—a novel architecture at the time—whose performance eclipsed all previous efforts at computer-based image recognition. The era of deep learning was born, with computer vision as its original use case. In the decade since, computer vision capabilities have raced forward at a breathtaking pace.

To put it simply, computer vision is the automation of human sight. Sight is mankind’s most important sense; it underlies much of human life and economic activity. The ability to automate it therefore opens up massive market opportunities across every sector of the economy.

(To be sure, other areas of AI—natural language processing, for instance—have also become increasingly powerful in recent years. But core technology breakthroughs in NLP have come more recently, and as a result NLP remains more nascent from a product and commercial perspective.)

The first wave of entrepreneurial activity in modern computer vision centered on autonomous vehicles. Several startup success stories in that field, including computer vision pioneer Mobileye’s $15.3 billion sale to Intel in 2018, highlight the technology’s power to transform markets and unlock massive economic value.

Today, computer vision is finding applications across every sector of the economy. From agriculture to retail, from insurance to construction, entrepreneurs are applying computer vision to a wide range of industry-specific use cases with compelling economic upside.

Expect to see many computer vision startups among the next generation of “unicorns.” A crop of high-growth computer vision companies is nearing an inflection point, poised to break out to commercial scale and mainstream prominence. It is an exciting and pivotal time in the technology’s…

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New coalition aims to combat growing wave of ransomware attacks

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A new coalition of cybersecurity and tech groups is looking to create a roadmap for countering the surge of ransomware attacks that plagued city governments, schools and hospitals in 2020.

“You see ransomware as not just an increasing security threat, it is to the level of now where it’s putting hospitals, children, the elderly, financial institutions, everyone at risk,” Philip Reiner, executive chairman of the Institute for Security and Technology’s Ransomware Task Force, told The Hill.

“As a result, we were seized with the idea that creating a collaborative cross-sectoral grouping that is looking at it from a comprehensive, top-down policy approach could potentially have more effect,” Reiner added.

The California-based nonprofit aims to produce recommendations that will help governments and the private sector tackle the scourge of ransomware attacks.

Hackers have increasingly used these types of attacks — which involve accessing and encrypting the victim’s network and demanding payment to allow access again — to hit major targets, with city governments in Atlanta, Baltimore and New Orleans severely impaired by ransomware attacks over the past two years.

More recently, hospitals have become a target during the COVID-19 pandemic, with cyber criminals seeing vulnerable hospitals as easy targets more likely to pay a quick ransom as health care systems struggle to keep up with coronavirus cases. In some instances, the cyberattacks have been blamed for deaths due to delayed care.

“Ransomware has evolved from an economic annoyance to a national security and public health and safety threat,” said Michael Daniel, who served as special assistant to former President Obama and cybersecurity coordinator on the National Security Council. “It is affecting almost every sector of the economy and every size of organization, both public and private.”

Daniel now serves as president and CEO of the Cyber Threat Alliance, one of the groups that has signed on as a member of the newly formed coalition.

The coalition’s task force is made up of heavy hitters in the cybersecurity and tech sector, including Microsoft, FireEye and McAfee, along with cyber-focused groups like the CyberPeace…

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Russia-Based Hackers Plan New Wave of Attacks Against U.S. Hospitals: Security Firm

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A Russia-based ransomware group responsible for a new wave of attacks against U.S. hospitals is laying the groundwork to cripple at least ten more, according to the cyber-security firm Prevailion Inc.

Prevailion’s analysis comes a day after the FBI and two other federal agencies issued a warning about an imminent and credible threat to hospitals and health-care providers from cyber attacks, including ransomware capable of locking entire computer networks.

The hacking group responsible — known among some experts as UNC1878 and others as Wizard Spider — has already hit at least nine hospitals in three weeks, crippling critical computer systems and demanding multimillion-dollar ransoms.

The health-care attacks have been ongoing since at least September, according to the cyber-security firm Crowdstrike. The victims included Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where doctors are struggling to keep track of patient medications and other critical information on paper rather than the digital systems they normally use.

“The increased workload is astronomical for all hospital employees and will inevitably have an impact on patient care,” said one of the hospital’s doctors, who wasn’t authorized to speak to the press and asked not to be named.

The timing of the latest wave of attacks – coming as the U.S. nears 9 million coronavirus infections and hospitalizations surge – has unsettled security experts used to the ruthlessness of global cyber gangs.

“Certainly no cyber crime is good, but this really is despicable and evil,” said Karim Hijazi, Prevailion’s chief executive.

Over the last 24-hours, Prevailion has gained access to the communications that the Russian hackers are using to control computers inside U.S. hospitals, as well as other victims worldwide. That data shows that the hackers have infiltrated at least 440 organizations globally, including government agencies, pharmaceutical companies and universities, Hijazi said.

But it’s the targeting of medical care facilities that is most worrying. The infected organizations include hospitals in New Jersey, Georgia, Florida, Massachusetts, Texas and Arkansas, according to data provided by…

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